Managing Difficult Relationships: The Case of Foreign Correspondents in Nigeria, State Officials, and Senior Editors in Overseas Media

ABSTRACT

This research systematically and empirically examines challenges that confront Nigerian foreign correspondents, including how foreign correspondents manage the demands of their job such as pressures from senior editors at their head offices, restricted access to information and state officials, and government officials interfering with objective news reporting. The study also looks at correspondents’ accounts of their individual experiences and the strategies they deploy to circumnavigate the challenges they encounter in their professional practice. The merit of this research lies in its intent to fill existing gaps in the scholarship of foreign correspondence in Africa. Specifically, the study contributes to knowledge and understanding of foreign correspondents in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, including an understanding of the difficult environment of journalistic practices in a non-Western country.

KEYWORDS:

• Foreign correspondents
• Nigeria
• foreign news
• Africa
• journalism practice
• media freedom
• news and diplomacy

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).